Feeding wildlife can also vastly alter the behavior of an animal which can negatively impact their life and survival.

• Increased Dependency on humans because when we feed wildlife, they start to become habituated to the food source and become dependent on humans to feed them for survival. They may start to lose their foraging skills, and either will starve when not given constant food or be attracted to urban areas like dumps and neighborhoods. Ex: bears attracted to dumps, as they develop a dependency and addiction to human food.

 

• Increased inter/intraspecies aggression can be caused by competition for a desirable food source. It can even lead to increased aggression against humans if they don’t get what they want, as they become less fearful. Example: raccoons when not being fed by campers at a campsite may become extremely aggressive and do things as try to bite, hiss or harass humans.

 

• Affects reproduction rates as animals will produce too many young as food does not become a limiting factor and food source eventually becomes depleted, and thus the animal population suffers. This also can result in an ecological imbalance in the trophic levels, and negatively impact other species.

 

• Affects migration, as the natural feed depletion of food during winter times indicates for some animals such as birds and caribou to migrate. Constant food sources provided by humans can affect these migration patterns. Even simply putting out a bird feeder can cause birds to stay put.